Ecocities overview

Ecocities Overview
Ciities and sustainbaility
Cities are the biggest things people make
I=PAT(LUI)
First we shape Cities then they shape us
Built environment limits what we can imagine llfe to be like
The problem of car centric design
Better car makes a worse city
Health and obesity
Better to get exercise as a natural course of life
Ecocities: What can the city be?
City as an organism
Build soil. Collect and Store water, build biodiversity
Gehl: Lively, Safe, Sustainable, Halthy

First we shape cities, then they shape us
- Winston Churchill

What is the greenest place in America?

New York City VS Vermont
New York Vermont
Gasoline (gal/yr) 90 (1920) 545
Electricity(kwh/yr) 4700 7100 (11,000 us)
Ranking on energy use if it were a state
51 (11th largest state if it were a state)
Passenger transit miles 30% 0f US total 0
% of households without a car
54% (77% Manhattan) 2 or 3 per family
Tons CO2/person 7.1 30
Travel to work
Bike, foot, public transit 77% approx 0 (US 7%)
If everyone in New York was housed in density of Vermont it would cover all of new
England plus New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia
And New York is not an ecocity

Cities and Sustainability
Ecological Impact = P*A*T*LUI
P = Population
A = Affluence
T = Technology
LUI = Land Use Infrastructure

In Ecocities, Efficiencies Are Built In:
European Example
“My point is that the low-carbon footprints depend on the
infrastructure of life, and in that sense Europeans have
an immediate advantage. To live without a clothes dryer
or AC in the United States is considered tough and feels
like a sacrifice. To do so in Rome — where apartments all
include a clothes-drying balcony or indoor rack, and
where buildings have thick walls and shutters to help you
cope with the heat — is the norm” Elisabeth Rosenthal
in What Makes Europe Greener than America
Carbon Footprint (tons CO2/person/yr):
France 6.6
Italy 8
UK 9.6
US 20

Built in cont’d
Building efficiency - shared heating/cooling costs
Smaller dwelling units
Less places to put stuff, less stuff to buy
Potential for less of a consumer lifestyle
Access by proximity
All physical, social, educational, livelihood needs met
by walking
Health Benefits - Exercise built into everyday life

Car centric vs People-centric Design
City Design Order:
1. Life
2. Space
3. Buildings
Invite people to walk, use bikes,
enjoy streetscape
From Jan Gehl, responsible for much of Copenhagen's people centric
design, and author of The Space Between Buildings and Cities for People

Transportation
BIKES CARS BUS
72 PEOPLE

Better Yet: Walking and Access by
Proximity

“Above all, do not lose your
desire to walk. Every day
I walk myself into a state
of well-being and walk
away from every illness,
I have walked myself into
my best thoughts and I
know of no thought so
burdensome that oen
cannot walk away from
it.”
Soren
Kierkegard

Ivan Illich on Cars
• The model American male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car. He sits
in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He
earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He
works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his
sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure
does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by
transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching
automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve
the quality of the next buy.
• The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 7500 miles: less than five miles per
hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the
same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 percent of
their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 percent.
• What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is
not more mileage per hour of lifetime for the majority, but more hours of
compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally
distributed by the transportation industry.

Electric Transportation: Nissan Leaf
• Nissan Leaf Example
Assume 12,000 miles per year
Leaf gets 5.4 miles per kwh, 2300 kwh per year
Cost for electrictity at 12 cents/kwh:$271
Equivalent cost for gas @$3/gallon: $1200
Like having 70 cent per gallon gasoline

The better car makes the worse city

The Geography of Nowhere:
Kuntsler Critique of Car Culture

Most photographed place in Fairfield

Bicycle Infrastructure
Public Bike Systems = Public Transportation
like a bus, taxi, or subway
Short term use, not pleasure riding

BIXI photos from May 2012 trip to
Montreal

Highest: $100
Lowest: $15
Average: $40
Median: $38
If Jefferson County spent like these cities:
$/person/yr Annual tot 20 Year Investment
$100 (high) $1,500,000 $30 million
$15 (low) $225,000 $4.5 million
$40 (avg) $600,000 $12 million
$38 (median) $570,000 $11.4 million
Cost spent on trails system to date: $2-4 million

Placemaking, Michael Cook, and City
Repair

Park(ing) day
Pop up public parks

Ecocity as a Context for Green
Technologies

The City as an Organism: The ecology
of the Ecocity

The Ecocity Solution
Register video

Strategies for transitioning to ecocities

Transfer of development rights (TDR)
Used to preserve farmland or natural areas and
historic properties. Sell development rights.
Purchaser can get benefits at another project.
Ex: Buy development rights to save an historic
building from development. Purchaser gets to
build at higher density than normally allowed in
another project
Double TDR – removes existing infrastructure at
“sending site”, allows more to be built at
“receiving site”

Transfer of development rights (TDR)
Sample TDR ordinance
“Any person owning improved property within fifty feet of the
historic centerline of a buried or open creek may sell the
development rights of his/her property to a developer , by
way of a land trust directly, for demolition of improvements
and restoration of open space on the sending site and for
transfer of those rights to any site within three blocks of a
regional rail transit station or intersection of 4 or more bus
lines.”
Double TDR

TDR Revolving Fund
• Non profit or municipality creates a fund to buy land
and sell development rights so that the rights to
develop are shifted to ecocity ready parts of town.
• Land and buildings are purchased with the fund,
buildings are removed, and nature or agriculture
established.
• Developer then buys the development rights to be
used in elsewhere and fund is replenished
“Should be open space acquisition fund”

Tax Credits (like for historic buildings)
Offsets taxes owed.
Ex: You owe $1000 in taxes. You spend $500 on qualifying ecocity infrastructure. You now
owe only $500 in taxes.
Ex Project Criteria
1. In the right area (in or close to a transit center)
2. Adds density and diversity
3. Removes development to restore a creek
4. Creates a greeway
5. Expand a community garden
6. Provide right of way to a railroad
No tax bill? Sell the credits to someone who needs them.
Used to preserve historic buildings.
“It’s time that waterways, hills, trees and soils are considered as valuable as historic
architecture and as worthy of restoration” register, Ecocities page 264

Restoring hydrologically functional
landscapes in cities
Rain gardens
Permiable pavement

Seattle’s Street Edge Alternatives Program

 Infiltrates most rainfall
 Convey 25-yr.,24hr storm
 Enhance Water Quality
 Decrease Runoff By 98%

Roussillon Ochre Conservatory
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO1e8Sk
PhNo#t=83

Picture of tornoto car public art
planted

Ecocities overview

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Ecocities overview